The weekend started in Salt Lake, with Mexican food for supper on Friday and a trip up Emigration Canyon to a diner I’ve wanted to try for Saturday brunch (I had part of the leftovers on the plane and the other part for dessert tonight). We stopped at King’s English bookstore, where I picked up an emergency book for the plane ride home (I ended up not needing it, but only because I had it), and then I headed back east to Corey.

This morning there was a trip to the farmers market, and, later, to Virginia to return library materials and shop their Friends’ used book sale, where I picked up a bagful of books. On the way home, I stopped at the garden, the grocery store, and the drug store and chatted with my folks. Our cat sitter stopped by to return our keys and I spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch.

How was your weekend?

Okay, so apparently travel days aren’t great for my posting things when I think I am. Or maybe weekends. But especially weekend travel days.

Anyway, here’s what I was thinking I’d get to today when it was still yesterday (sort of):

• Go to the farmers market
• Return library books to Virginia (and check out the used book sale)
• Visit my garden
• Arrange to pay our cat sitter
• Do a load of laundry
• Procure (and prep if I’m feeling super ambitious) easy lunch foods for this week
• Cuddle the cat
• Sign up for #TBTBSanta before it’s too late
• Buy Jenny’s Christmas present while it’s on sale
• Knit at least three rows

Happy return-to-reality to me!

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll head east again, and Rudi will stay here to continue our work for another 10 days or so.

We’ve nearly filled three dumpsters full. We’ve found many of the things Rudi was hoping to, but not the thing his mom’s been asking about, which distresses me.

We’d originally hoped this trip would allow us to get the house emptied and on the market, but I’m less optimistic that’s goong to happen than at the outset. But maybe one more trip after this.

And that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Several beautiful days here in Salt Lake.

2. The crews, a team of professional organizers and a group of haulers, Rudi hired to help us clear out his mom’s house here in Salt Lake have been as good as promised. The ground they’ve helped us cover would have taken us months.

3. Rudi needed a pair of shorts, so I took a look at tops for Rudi’s mom. I found two, both of which she liked.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

I’d really hoped to have a finished shawl to show you this week. I’d planned to finish the final mosaic section on the plane and then to get through the dreaded two-color ribbing while I was out here. I even brought a ball of sock yarn so I’d be able to cast on a project for the flight home. But none of that ended up materializing and I am still 12 rows from the end of the mosaic. It’s fine. I’ll get to it. It’s just that I’m really ready to be knitting something else after all these months.

Where I did have success with the shawl this week was in not having to rip back when the needle separated from the cable and a third of my active stitches found themselves flopping around freely. Luckily, Rudi found a needle the right size amongst his mom’s stuff, so I didn’t have to buy one (although we still went to the local yarn shop anyway). I admit that getting the final stitch of the rolled edging back on the needle gave me a couple minutes’ pause, but eventually I figured out what I needed to do. (You can see the needle-less end curled up next to the new needle once all the stitches were back on one cable or the other.)

As for reading, I’ve been making steady progress through Ally Carter’s Heist Society, a #GiftmasInJuly present, and enjoying it quite a bit. It’s about a teen girl who’s walked away from a family legacy of crime, only to be dragged back in when her father’s life is threatened by an evil art collector who’s been robbed. (Mum, remind me to pack it to share with you at Thanksgiving.)

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are crafting and reading this week.

Today was the day we’d set aside to go up into the Wasatch to Silver Fork Lodge for lunch and an autumnal stroll around Silver Lake. I went to sleep to rain in Salt Lake, which meant snow in the mountains, but we didn’t realize quite how much. By the time we reached the restaurant, we were seeing nearly ten inches of wet snow on the ground. After lunch we continued up the mountain to the lake, where it was closer to a foot.

The path around the lake was obscured, and I didn’t especially want to accidentally veer off and end up in the lake by mistake. So we contented ourselves with following another intrepid visitor’s footprints for a bit before returning to the car for a small snowball fight.